Recommendations for Facial Recognition Input Images

The models used for face and celebrity recognition operations are designed to work
for a wide variety of poses, facial expressions,
age ranges, rotations, lighting conditions, and sizes. We recommend you use the following
guidelines when choosing reference photos
for CompareFaces or for adding faces to a collection using IndexFaces.

Use an image with a face that is within the recommended range of angles. The pitch
should be less than 30 degrees
face down and less than 45 degrees face up. The yaw should be less than 45 degrees
in either direction. There is no restriction on the Roll.

Use an image of a face with both eyes open and visible.

When creating a collection using IndexFaces, use multiple face images of an individual with different pitches and yaws
(within the recommended range of angles). We recommend at least 5 images of the person
be indexed–straight
on, face turned left with a yaw of 45 degrees or less, face turned right with a yaw
of 45 degrees or less, face tilted down with a pitch of
30 degrees or less, and face tilted up with a pitch of 45 degrees or less. If you
want to track that these face instances belong
to the same individual, consider using the external image ID attribute if there is
only one face in the image being indexed.
For example, 5 images of John Doe can be tracked in the collection with external image
IDs as John_Doe_1.jpg, … John_Doe_5.jpg.

Use an image of a face that is not obscured or tightly cropped. The image should contain
the full head and shoulders of the person.
It should not be cropped to the face bounding box.

Avoid items that block the face, such as headbands and masks.

Use an image of a face that occupies a large proportion of the image. Images where
the face occupies a larger
portion of the image are matched with greater accuracy.

Ensure an image is sufficiently large in terms of resolution. Amazon Rekognition can
recognize faces as small as 50x50 pixels
in image resolutions up to 1920x1080. Higher-resolution images require a larger minimum
face size. Faces larger than the minimum size provide
a more accurate set of facial recognition results.

Use color images.

Use images with flat lighting on the face, as opposed to varied lighting such as shadows.

Use images that have sufficient contrast with the background. A high-contrast monochrome
background works well.

Use images of faces with neutral facial expressions with mouth closed and little to
no smile for applications that require high precision.

Use images that are bright and sharp. Avoid using images that may be blurry due to
subject and camera motion as much as possible. DetectFaces
can be used to determine the brightness and sharpness of a face.

Ensure that recent face images are indexed.

Javascript is disabled or is unavailable in your browser.

To use the AWS Documentation, Javascript must be enabled. Please refer to your browser's
Help pages for instructions.